MBR_ISSUE 43_LOWRES

ENTERTAINMENT
Malta Business Review
#1 That thing about the nerds
The first picture that might come to your mind
is probably a teenage boy who’s sitting in his
parents’ basement. You would probably call
that kid a ‘geek’ or a ‘nerd’ and most likely think
he’s not someone who’s going to date the
prom queen. And you could be right.
Sure, the average eSports fan probably
doesn’t live in the New York’s East Village,
nor do they drink fancy matcha lattes after
attending Vinyasa yoga class. They also don’t
usually live in artsy lofts with a fixie bike in the
hallway or a surfboard on the wall. In fact, it’s
more likely they’re sitting in an engineering
or computer science lecture, learning about
macroeconomics or tutoring math.
What makes me say that? It’s simple. The
people who keep up with eSports very likely
possess not only above-average English skills
but also significant cognitive skills.
If you don’t believe me, come and visit an ESL
(Electronic Sports League) event and have a
look for yourself. The complexity that hits you
when commentators analyse strategies, plays
and scenarios in double-time English is a pretty
good demonstration of the brain capacity of
eSports fans who live all over the world. ‘Dota
2’, for example, one of the most popular games
right now, is an amalgam of game theory, as in
the movie A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe;
and American-football moves coupled with the
high speed of basketball. And all that wrapped
in bangs, thuds and lots of blinking lights.
So, let’s put it like this: eSports fans and players
may not be your typical mood-board target
group that live in urban lofts, but they aren’t
the blaring, fireworks-lobbing beer lunatics
that can be found in other types of sports.
It’s most likely that a lot of them will become
tomorrow’s programmers, aircraft specialists
and mobility engineers. Yes, they are the ones
who’ll go on to have the money.
#2 That thing about the violence
I hear this a lot: eSports and gaming is about
bang-bang and violence and forms the perfect
boot camp for future serial killers. When most
people think about serious eSports they think
about ‘Counter-Strike’, and, again, they are
right. ‘Counter-Strike’ is huge.
The current player base stands at a cool 10
million. Per month, obviously! Sometimes,
there are up to 850,000 gamers playing on
the servers at the same time. During ESL One
Cologne (like a world championship), there
were 15 million unique viewers watching the
streamed matches online — read that number
one more time — and 47.9 million hours of
‘Counter-Strike’ were watched on Twitch in
January 2017 alone.
Statistically they cannot all be maniacs and
serial killers.
‘Counter-Strike’ is among the four most
popular eSports titles. That’s why prize pools
"eSports is the sport
and entertainment
phenomenon of the new
generation
can easily reach into the millions of dollars
— on top of an average player base salary of
about between $65,000 and $100,000. Think
about it. You don’t make these amounts of
money through senseless aggression but
rather technical versatility, reflexes and,
most importantly, a high degree of tactical
thinking, both individually and as a team.
So it’s hardly surprising that the whole do-
FPS-games-make-you-violent (that is, firstperson-shooter)
discussion is limited to a few
countries. Countries like Germany, where
I live, for instance. In other countries huge
brands such as Visa, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Audi
and Domino’s Pizza have been sponsoring
‘CounterStrike’ teams and events for quite
a while now, and NBA players and top DJs
such as Steve Aoki are even buying their own
teams. In comparison, the fact that some
countries are still stuck thinking ‘Counter-
Strike’ is for unstable personalities with low
impulse control and high levels of aggression
is somewhat embarrassing, to be honest.
#3 That thing about ‘not being a sport’
Some people may argue that eSports is not a
normal sport. And they are correct; nothing is
really normal in eSports. A global community
that is digitally connected, exceptionally
clever, gets its entertainment via streams,
willingly pays for ‘in-game items’ (for example,
little outfits for your character) and regularly
breaks viewership records is anything but a
normal sport. Because the fact remains that
normal sports — apart from soccer and very
few others — are having huge difficulties in
many areas. Entire sports are taking place
practically without any viewers, and organized
sports entities are desperately looking for
members. Meanwhile, the eSports kids just
have to open up their browser or game client.
Long story short: the entry barriers are a lot
lower than they are in other sports.
And what about the sweating? Shouldn’t
sports be sweaty? Another one of those
topics. . . Once you have seen how many
actions the pros perform every single minute,
how precisely they are handling their mouse
and keyboard, you can hardly maintain that
there isn’t a physical component to it. Then
there’s the mental component as well — and
let’s not forget that chess is a sport, too.
The thing is: eSports can help itself to
elements of traditional sports, picking up
what works best. It can. But it doesn’t have to.
And that’s what makes it so exciting. After all,
in some ways eSports is still in its early stages
and therefore still keen for co-shaping!
Entertainment is what entertains
Again, this is reality: we have heard peculiar
stories about ‘World of Warcraft’ and
struggling families in South Korea. We have
seen the long lines of people buying games
and going crazy about new consoles. And
there is an entire genre on YouTube called
‘Let’s Play Videos’. What is happening now is
not only an evolution of gaming it’s a powerful
transition that will bridge different parts of
different entertainment industries. It will
bridge sports with gaming, with streaming,
with talent, with live, with online, with on-theground
and with a global community.
eSports is the sport and entertainment
phenomenon of the new generation: it’s a
digital-born sport with digital-born stars. And
there is a much stronger feeling of ownership
by the fans. They have helped build the
eSports scene from the ground up themselves
and thus feel strongly about it as ‘their’ scene.
This means they are much more interested in
what happens in the scene beyond individual
teams or athletes than regular sports fans
tend to be.
While we all know those brands and
industries that are desperately striving for
digital transformation, eSports has managed
to build its very own ecosystem. It’s all
digital by nature — the games, the training
sessions, the interaction with fans, the
activation, the reach and the views. It is also
a rather untapped space for many brands
and potential sponsors that still offers the
potential for genuine co-creation instead of
plain, unimaginative logo placements. We
may still lack a definition of entertainment,
but we know that it needs to entertain. MBR
Creditline: Toan Nguyen
www.maltabusinessreview.net
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